Tagged: cosmetician advice for men

In effect, my skin care regimen was not limited to this very subversive approach.

I haven’t come up with the main concept for my first book, but it must contain the following three components:

Crazy people

Wearing crazy clothes

Doing crazy things

That about sums up what I intend to do, but I have more important fish to fry. I have VERY OILY SKIN. I realized I needed to come up with a way to face my face, put my best face forward and keep my chin up – all at the same time.

I’ve made some headway in the ongoing efforts at improving my complexion. It’s very distracting. My mug is. I grew up in New Mexico and because of the dry desert climate I had a very healthy, albeit oily, face. You need that when evaporation is a way of life. Shaving was the only mean thing I ever did to my cheeks and chin for most of my life. Didn’t have to.

In the soggy air and abundant city shade of Dallas, TX, my face has moved in some sad directions indeed. Unforseen and unwelcomed. Turns out there’s this Sebum issue. Sebaceous glands within my epidermis whiskerinus have continued to remain in a desert-alert state of mind while the rest of my body and soul have been transported by profession to this lovely Trinity River delta city in North Texas.

What this sebum business means is – I’ve got a funky oil slick thinly disguised as a face, now under considerable glandular pressure to rise to the surface. Without a lot of practical history in the complex science of skin care, I have many a time scoured the aisles of my nearby Kroger for various implements I could put to use to address:

Painful welts

Infected whiskers

Excessively oily skin

Besides keeping handy a quart of hydrogen peroxide to dry out and shrink those welts and a variety of shaving gels to minimize the ingrown hairs, I eventually became a fan of the concept of microdermabrasion. It not only has a nice sounding name, a name that means business, but, by description, it also possesses the promise of filling the billing. You see, I needed some brand new skin to replace the faulty version I’d brought with me from Albuquerque, right? It seemed to work for a while, but eventually my face began to need three or more scrubbings a day just to keep up with the oils my sebaceous layer was contributing to offset the scrubbings. See the irony here?

Finally, I stopped into JC Penney where I buy many of my necessities, and deftly ducked into Sephora for some advice. I’d seen a guy or two in here before, and had been tempted many times to stop in. Since I now knew I wasn’t the only one who’d thought to consult an expert, today was the day. Sephora has just about everything for the person who needs to cleanse, correct and cover a blemished face. It helps that Adriana has remarkably perfect skin. Even really close up. That’s the best advertising.

But I wasn’t prepared for the look of horror that crossed Adriana’s face when I rattled off my skin-care regimen. “Oh, no, you shouldn’t be doing that!” she cried, as a child might when preparing to run from a burning house. Her expression just as quickly softened though into one of great beauty and compassion, mixed with just a little amusement. She explained that all that scrubbing I was doing had the unintended consequence of forcing my skin into war-time production of the sebum! We didn’t waste any time. We set to work, pulling one item after another; First stop? This.

Clarisonic – It feels like a sock filled with happy, fuzzy bumblebees.

Then, Adriana moved on with dazzling confidence, plucking items from a kiosk here and an end-cap shelf there, repeating verbatim my list of ailments and brandishing the corresponding cures. We picked out a variety of ointments, including a starter kit by Murad to control my acne symptoms, and a mosturizer for some lingering rosacea. That pretty much completed my whirlwind buying tour of Sephora along with her final instructions on when to use what. Now, after a week or so of following Adriana’s recommendations, I’ve already become a very passable looking 63 year-old dude. This is a work in progress of course. But I have a goal in mind. With dreams of some pretty lady’s lips attaching themselves to my new, relatively adorable face, I’ll close with this awesome track from Usher.